SUCKER BETS---(part 17)
27---BETTING ANYBODY IN AN UNPLAYABLE RACE by Joe Takach

It doesn’t matter if you play Southern California, New York, Kentucky, Florida or anywhere else when it comes to the “unplayable race”. These indecipherable affairs are laced thruout every betting card unless a specific track is having one of their “big” days such as Kentucky Derby Day, Belmont Day, Santa Anita Derby Day, Pacific Classic Day etc. On these rare afternoons, nearly every race is playable because the “best of the best” on that specific circuit all come together for a great day of racing.
Not so with your day-to-day race cards. Betting every race is unthinkable! You’re lucky if you can find 2 or 3 races a day in which to sink your teeth.
What’s an “unplayable race”?
Since I play Southern California, we’ll use this circuit as a template, but much of what follows below surely “fits” your circuit as well.
Most obvious would be our bottom-feeding 25K to 50K maiden claimers and doubly so if they are state-breds from California. Anything can occur in these “mystery races” and usually does. Quite often the winning trainers are the most surprised of anyone when their horses win as evidenced by the sometime quizzical look on their faces as if to say “How did that happen”?
Once finally graduating from these lowly maiden claiming races, these runners will begin to fill the bottom-feeding claiming ranks. In Southern California, the bottom is 10K at both Del Mar and Santa Anita and 8K at Hollywood.
After playing this sunny circuit daily for 15 years, I can personally assure you that the majority of 8K, 10K, 12.5K and 16K claiming races in Southern California are totally “unplayable”.
Why?
Real simple!
After publishing the DAILY SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HORSES TO WATCH along with my staff for 15 years and chronicling the “physicality”, pre-race warm-ups and post-race warm-downs of every horse on this circuit, one thing is painfully obvious at least to us----aliments!
Chronic physical problems rapidly increase as you slide down the claiming ladder.
Let’s take a gander at the many levels in the claiming ranks in Southern California.
Though rarely employed, our top claiming tag is 100K and once in a great while you’ll see a tag for 125K.
In the lofty 125K to 80K claiming ranks in Southern California, “legitimate” 80K to 125K runners usually make very solid paddock appearances. They look like “real” race horses. They walk well with positive attitudes and high energy levels. They always have excellent color and good muscling. They want to run---after all, that’s what they do for a living. I love betting these races when opportunity raises its head.
When you drop into the 62.5K and 50K claiming ranks, physical problems begin to surface. A runner might have an enlarged front ankle (wrapped or unwrapped) or he might walk a tad short suggesting a possible extension problem. He might even walk a tad wide.
But these horses are surely racing sound and win quite often. Most of these runners were “meant to be” a nice horses and perhaps once were before entering the claiming ranks. They usually have a touch of “backclass” somewhere in their past running lines. For the most part, these are great races to bet, because it’s much easier to locate the “live” contenders from the “obvious” pretenders.
Taking the next drops in Southern California we move to the 40K and 32K claiming ranks where “problematic” runners are more common as would be expected as you continue down the claiming ladder. When I walk into the paddock to take physicality notes, I fully expect to find problems with every runner and usually do.
But these races are still very competitive and “playable” because it usually comes down to which horses are feeling good this afternoon, or which runners physically look better than they did the last time they ran. I’m not afraid to step up to the plate in this scenario where I can spot a clear advantage.
The next drops in Southern California to 25K and 20K levels fall into my “yellow” or “caution zone”. To me it’s like driving my car and entering an intersection just as the light goes from green to “yellow” telling me that “change” is about to take place in the form of a red light. While my tires are never in the intersection when the light goes to red, I have a tendency to keep my wits about me in anticipation of possible danger when the “yellow” light surfaces.
My approach to either a 20K or a 25K claiming race is exactly the same as catching a yellow light entering an intersection. I get ready for the unexpected. Dropdowns, step ups and same level runners abound. The “yellow zone” is the last playable area before descending into the “red” or “unplayable zone”.
This “crossover zone” can offer great value at times when dropdown horses from higher levels try it for the first time. It can also offer good wagering possibilities on cheaper claimers who might have eliminated their old problem(s) and are making comebacks.
Though not as playable as the 32K and up claiming ranks, I can sometimes find a “diamonds in the rough” in these crossover affairs and at double digit mutuels.
And finally we move to my “red” zone.
The final four levels of 16K, 12.5K, 10K and 8K on the major circuit in Southern California are heavily laced with the “walking wounded”. Extension problems, enlarged ankles, bowed tendons and foot problems abound, not to mention “stops” and “blowouts”, martingales, run-out-bits, breathing difficulties, and a host of other physicality “no-nos”.
While I always pay attention and “look at” every horse the same way that I would “look at” every horse in a Graded race, these bottom-feeding claimers have more problems than the United Nations.
That’s exactly why they are on the bottom. The outcomes of these affairs are highly unpredictable and serious betting any of these races is nothing more than “downside risk” and “gambling” in the very purest sense of the word.
Trying to pick the “least slow” or the “least unsound” in a bottom-feeding claimer is handicapping suicide in the long run and nothing more than a “sucker bet”!!!

PART 18----MORE “SUCKER” BETS

© Joe Takach 2006